Surface mount device jumpers, commonly known as “SMD jumpers”, are well known in the art. One such SMD jumper is disclosed in United States Patent Publication 2002/0144841 to Hua et al. This SMD jumper is used for connection to a conductive trace on a printed circuit board and includes a conductive jumper element and at least two conductive terminals. The conductive jumper element has a cross-sectional area substantially greater than that of the trace. The at least two conductive terminals connect the jumper element to the trace.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,695,348 to Legrady discloses a generally hat-shaped surface mount electrical contact for surface mounting on a generally flat conductive surface of a printed circuit board as shown in FIGS. 16 and 17. The hat-shaped surface mounted electrical contact includes a base which has a generally flat surface suitable for contact with an attachment to a conductive surface of the printed circuit board. An electrical contact, which may be in a form of a pin, post, IDC, test point, receptacle or jumper, has at least one portion projecting from the base in a direction normal to the base. At least one bent intermediate connecting portion integrally connects the contact to the base. The contact, base and bent intermediate connecting portions are all formed from a generally flat sheet of conductive material.
Also, as shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B, a conventional jumper wire 1 can be used to connect a pair of donut-shaped conductive traces 3a and 3b on a conventional printed circuit board 5. A plurality of conductive elements 6 extending parallel to one another are disposed between the pair of conductive traces 3a and 3b. The plurality of conductive traces 6 and outer surface portions of the conventional printed circuit board 5 are covered with conventional solder resist 8. The jumper wire 1 is typically fabricated from copper wire plated with a tin coating. To assemble the jumper wire to the printed circuit board 5, a dedicated jumper wire insertion device (not shown) is required to insert the jumper wire 1 into the respective pair of holes 7a and 7b as shown in FIG. 1B so that respective ones of the distal ends 1a and 1b of the jumper wire 1 can be soldered to the respective ones of the conductive traces 3a and 3b by solder weldments 9a and 9b. Many manufacturers of printed circuit boards do not have jumper wire insertion devices that are dedicated for inserting jumper wires into printed circuit boards.
Further, a conventional SMD chip resistor with 0 ohms might be employed. However, a total length of the conventional SMD chip resistor with 0 ohms is limited in length. The length is typically 3.2 millimeters or less. In practice, this length can be longer. However, the base material used for this chip resistor is ceramic. It is postulated that the ceramic material contributes to solder fatigue and subsequent solder failure after use over a relatively long period of time due to a mismatch of thermal coefficients with the main circuit board material which is a plastic based FR-1 or CEM-1.
It would be beneficial to provide a surface mount device jumper that is compatible for use with a printed circuit board designed to employ jumper wires. It would also be beneficial to provide a surface mount device jumper that can be fabricated at a variety of desired lengths and particularly at a length greater than 3.2 millimeters without using a ceramic base material. It would be advantageous to provide a surface mount device jumper that can be picked-up and placed on a printed circuit board by conventional SMD placer equipment. The present invention provides these benefits and this advantage.